


Dying Breed

by recrudescence



Category: Titus Andronicus - Shakespeare
Genre: Abortion, Canonical Character Death, Captivity, Imperialism, Incest, M/M, Multi, Sexual Violence, Xenophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-24
Updated: 2008-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-17 10:19:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/550511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recrudescence/pseuds/recrudescence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The irony is not lost on you that the founders of Rome were raised by wolves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dying Breed

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Yuletide 2008, originally posted [here](http://yuletidetreasure.org/archive/73/dyingbreed.html).

You know what the enlightened parts of the world say of your people. The Goths, worse by far than the stinking, fur-swathed Swedes and Saxons. Uncultured, unsalvageable heathens with berserkers in their blood and children who grow up cutting their teeth on the bones of their enemies.

The latter might very well be true, but you're in no position to discuss the matter with anyone. Let them wonder, let them form their own conclusions about the past. The future is pressing in on all sides and you need both hands free to mold it.

Taken from your homeland in chains, your mother's face drawn but proud, strained with desperation right up until your oldest brother, Alarbus, was killed in front of you.

It was Alarbus who had brought home tales of battle and wonderment for you and Chiron when you were still small and untried and your father was a shadowy, awe-inspiring figure residing in a world you had yet to join. Alarbus who had, once you were old enough, initiated you into the sport of taking the Moorish serving girls to bed and making wagers on the appearance of the child if there should be one. One servant, too young to know better, had swallowed some chemical toxin in a panic to try and expel the infant prematurely. When the cook found her, it seemed that everything in her body save the child had been wrenched out of her through the mouth.

You find this no more shocking or deplorable than the Romans with their triumphs and carousals. Ostentatiously strutting like peacocks, displaying the feathers of their glory to be seized and plucked out by the handful

Tamora, as you watched, had shoveled practicality over her grief and reappeared, gilded, ready for politics and revenge. Ready to become a part of the parade until her fingers could close around all that plumage and wrench it out at the roots.

You knew immediately that was the agenda, catching Chiron's searing gaze and seeing an identical acknowledgement there. The two of you may be out of the land of your birth now, but by no means are you out of your element. Rome is meant to be burned, and you and your older brother will be there to do it.

In the emperor's quarters, you catch Chiron's eye along with his lips and feel your brother shuddering and smiling like ice as Saturninus arches off his marriage bed and spends himself in his hand. So like a Roman. The faintest promise of pleasure, and all barriers fold back to allow entry. Your mother will be proud. Chiron curls against your body in a taut white wave of flesh and whispers that it would be ludicrously easy to open the emperor's throat right here and now. You thread a hand through his hair and murmur that it isn't your decision to make. Let Tamora bide her time.

Chiron, a name taken from the Greek mythos: the centaur who aspired, reached above his earthy origins and took the world in hand. Tried to be better than he was, denounced where he came from--the product of rage and rape, like all the others. Trying to improve upon his lot in life when he was born for anything but. You wonder if Tamora named your brother in irony. The possibility, like so many other things no one expects to languish in your mind, has occurred to you more than once.

You too, for that matter. Demetrius, the harvester, cutting down wheat and grain and lives in one swoop of a scythe. Saturninus sleeps. You slide a glance towards Chiron's insolent, sullen face and smile.

Classical education among the barbarians. You aren't stupid, but the Roman people never imagine otherwise. People expect clumsiness, not cunning, from your family--the prisoners, blinded by hate and ignorance, no room for finesse. The element of surprise is a valuable one, and your kin as always been at your side. Alarbus taught you well.

As you watch, the Romans gradually go from deriding your mother to fearing her influence over their leader. There are so few of you, bound by blood and nothing more, but you will win this war in the end. Cold fingers on your nipples, laughing mouth against your neck, the emperor happy to have beautiful boys to play with, dress up and spoil, drug on the glutted glamour of the court and let them go to seed as he beds their mother, never noticing that she ties his empire around him like a tangle of twine. Chiron watches him resting on her breast the way you remember doing as a child--strung out on the offerings of his own gaudy world--and grins fiercely against your mouth.

Civilized Rome. The same filth, but with fancier packaging. Ornate and stamped with the official seal of the Empire. Your people, at least, have never pretended to be anything other than what you truly are. Someday, you will be able to return to them and laugh.

Old Andronicus hasn't laughed once. Off at the wars for a decade and more, defending his home from the savage hordes, the victor who won the war and returned home only to lose everything. Bringing the royal family back with him in chains and unwittingly tipping the blood-coated dominoes into action: brother killing brother, father killing son, Bassianus and Mutius both ended with hardly a second thought.

You may be the uncouth one here in the midst of all this sickening opulence, but you know how much value the significance of a family truly carries. The foundation it provides, regardless of how depraved or uneducated any observers assume it to be, is unmatchable. Standing together with a determination that forms everlasting solidity from the source and ensures the resulting growth is strong and good and _powerful_. Loyalty: one thing you've noticed is pleasantly lacking in your new prison. Your father would never have turned on one of his sons the way Andronicus did his. You could never imagine yourself truly tearing Chiron apart, for all you circle and snap at one another like tigers on occasion.

There's no doubt in your mind that Tamora knows what she's doing. The population can presume to know the measure of you, and they can continue their underestimating right up to the grave. You and Chiron continue gnashing your teeth and playing your parts--the feral idiots, adrift among humans.

The irony is not lost on you that the founders of Rome were raised by wolves.


End file.
